We’ve never owned a dog but I understand they’re very expensive, what with the licensing, shots, grooming, food and accessories and all – not to mention the initial cost of the dog itself. In addition, many people easily pay $500-$2500 or more to own a “purebred” pedigree of one kind or another.

So when my daughter asked for a $29 guinea pig two Christmases ago I was thrilled. “This is the perfect gift!” I thought. “Except for a small amount of food, guinea pigs don’t have ANY of those expenses!”

So, my wife and I headed over to the pet store to pick up her pig. Oh yeah, and a few other items:

habitat cage – $120

bedding – $15

bag of hay – $15

food – $20

vitamins $10

pigloo – $15

Ok, suddenly this $30 rat was costing us $224.

All right, no problem. After all, this was the only thing she actually asked for for Christmas – and with the exception of a little bit of food, these will all be one-time costs.

And so that Christmas morning a pig was born – and the children rejoiced. “Yay!”

Until my son chimed in… “Did you know that guinea pigs are supposed to be kept in pairs? So they don’t feel lonely?

“Uh, no way bud,” I retorted “this house ain’t big enough for a herd of pigs.”

And so the next day another pig was born – and the children rejoiced once again. “Yay!”

It took less than a month until the first bag of bedding was gone. And the first bag of food and hay as well.

“Dad, we need some money to go get some things for the pigs.”
“Sure,” I said as I peeled $5 from my wallet.
“Yeah right. We need like $50. At least.”

And this is how it’s been ever since. About once a month we shell out $50 for supplies and everyone is the children are happy.

Except for a few weeks ago when one of the pig’s pee started to look dark. It played out like this:

Initial vet visit: $35

Prescription for UTI: $35

Follow up visit because it didn’t appear she was getting better so they needed to see her all day and do blood and urine analysis: $150

Refill for prescription: $35

Total cost of dark pee: $255

So then… let’s add this up after 13 months, shall we?

Initial purchase costs: $224

Supplies since initial purchase: $600

Vet and medicines: $255

Total cost since purchase: $1,079

Ya, there’s a comma in that number folks!

Of course just when I think we’ve made a serious mistake, I take one look at these little furballs and change my mind.

I knew I was going to be a singer from the time I was about 4 years old.

My sister, who is 10 years older than me, used to play her Beatles and Herman’s Hermits records on her phonograph in her bedroom, and I’d sit on the floor outside her door and sing along at the top of my lungs… that is until she yelled at me to “shut up and go in the other room!”

Then, when the Monkees came on TV it sealed the deal. To me there was nobody cooler than Davy Jones or Micky Dolenz and I was going to be just like them.

Just seeing these guys up in front of the microphones was all I needed. More than anything in the world I wanted to someday be that cool. And this is why:

Now be honest women… how many of you are suddenly crushing on him like you were 12 again? Hey – I don’t blame you. He makes me feel kinda funny too. Not that there’s anything wrong with that!

The Monkees (1966-1967) were one of only two shows that I can think of that featured segments of bands playing their music within the plot of a standard storyline – not counting variety shows.

In those days if you weren’t planted in front of the TV set when it was show time, you flat out missed it. There were no VCRs to capture the moment if you weren’t home – although we were guilty of tape recording the entire show on audio cassette and playing it back 100 times over the following week, so that was better than nothing.

The other show that featured a band playing their song of the week was the 2nd major influence of my musical youth. The Partridge Family (1970-1974) came along right at the start of my teen years when the thought of becoming a rock star sex symbol started to appeal to me for the first time.

And as far as I was concerned, there was no one hipper or sexier than David Cassidy himself. Take a look for yourself:

Hmm, I’m thinking maybe David might have been confusing waking up “in love” with waking up with morning wood, but hey – as long as he was happy about it did it really matter?

And so there they are… the two TV shows that most influenced me to eventually become a musician, travel around the world, meet my wife, have kids, start a blog, and get picked up by Snuppy as a fellow Snarkster to tell my story here.

I must say it’s been quite a ride, but I’d like to thank my good friends Davy and David for showing me the way.

Here’s the deal… my 15 year-old son figured this would be a GREAT gift to buy me for Christmas – which of course it was (God I love that kid).

But low and behold there were other opinions in the household.

Apparently my wife didn’t want me wearing this shirt. Something about “embarrassing the hell out of her” or “not respecting her” or some other irrational blather – I really wasn’t listening. Nonetheless, I love my wife (who is a hot mom btw) and so I obliged her and took the shirt off the instant we got home from church that Christmas morning.

This led me back to Target to return my gift, where I had this stimulating conversation with the customer service woman:

“Excuse me, but I need to return this tee shirt.”

“Is there anything wrong with it sir?”

“No. It doesn’t fit… my wife’s idea of what a 46 year old husband should be wearing.”

“She’s right.”

D’oh! The other thrill of returning this was that if you’ve ever received a gift from a teenager, you know that they don’t tend to keep important things. Like receipts for instance. They also don’t have checks or credit cards and therefore always pay for things with cash. And so the opinionated customer service woman was less than interested in taking back my rejected shirt.

But… after begging her to let me do a direct exchange for a different shirt in front of the other 25 people waiting in the post-Christmas return line behind me – she finally had degraded me enough where apparently she felt I was worthy of the exchange.

And so eventually I did end up with another, less controversial tee shirt – but not nearly as cool as the Hot Moms one. This got me thinking about designing some new tee shirts that could possibly fill this void for other husbands out there who end up in this same leaky boat. For example, would this be more appropriate?

I don’t know, I always thought pioneer school teachers were kind of sexy.

Or how about this one?

No, wait – I hate mimes. UNLESS….

Ahh, MUCH better!

Then of course there’s this version for the obsessed blogger…

Eh. But still none of those were floating my wife’s boat. Until I suggested this one…

Normally there are very few things that get my goat, but last Friday my goat was got.

I was sitting at my desk battling a software upgrade from hell. For whatever reason, my connection kept failing during a major file download and crashing my browser session. Things had gone from bad to worse and I was quickly getting fed up when my download errored for the third time.

“Oh for Pete’s sakes!” I blurted out.

That’s when one of my co-workers decided to challenge me.

CW: I believe the proper phrase is “Oh for Pete’s sake.”

Me: What?

CW: You know – without the “s.”

Me: What?

CW: Jeff, you said “Oh for Pete’s sakes” and it’s supposed to be “Oh for Pete’s sake.” Singular.

Me: Really.

CW: Yes. Just “Pete’s sake.”

Me: And how the hell do YOU know that Pete didn’t have more than one sake? What if he was a collector of sakes and he had a whole box full of them? What if he owned a company that made millions of them every day? What if Pete had 15 children and he named every one of them Sake? HAVEN’T YOU EVER HEARD OF A NAMESAKE?!!!

CW: Uh… ok.

Me: And what are you anyway, the friggen phrase police?

CW: Ya. Say listen, I need to make a call here. You gonna be ok back there?

And it was precisely at that moment (and unbeknownst to my co-worker) that my download crashed again.

Me:SON OF A BITCH!!!

CW:! (with eyes as wide as saucers)

Me: Oh I’m sorry, did I say that wrong too?

Of course as soon as I said that I apologized and explained why I had flown off the handle. But for some reason, when I asked her if I could have my goat back she just looked at me like I was insane.

With the exception of a few minor embarrassments such as Jesse Ventura, Vikings football and the fact that we’ve become known as the gay bathroom sex capital of the world, Minnesota is a pretty nifty place.

And one reason is that Minnesota has a lot to offer, such as our beautiful 10,000 lakes, our stellar medical industry and our ginormous mall – formally known as the “Mall of Holy crap, this place is so frikken huge you’ll have to walk 8 miles just to shop at 4 different stores for a pair of gloves!” which of course didn’t fit on the sign (or denote a very positive message for that matter), so they instead claimed it as the representative mall of the entire western hemisphere and shortened it to “Mall of America” instead.

logo from earlier ill-fated attempt at naming our mega-mall

So, even though we have a lot to offer, there are many people who innocently find their way here completely unprepared for life in Minnesota. As a Scandinavian Minnesotan, I am genetically programmed to slog my way through winter and pretend it doesn’t bother me, that’s what we do here. But please don’t be naive – this place is not for everyone.

That’s why I’m here to give those of you who have yet to make the migration to our hardy state some tips that will hopefully help prepare you for the things they don’t tell you in the tourism brochures.

IF you feel you have to live here, you’re much better off embracing the things you can’t change, rather than fighting them to no avail and inevitably regretting your decision to move here in the first place.

For example:

Embrace the seasons – This is what we tell ourselves once summer has ended after only four weeks. “But the colors are SO beautiful in the fall here. THAT’S why I love Minnesota so much!” Learn to adopt that phrase.

Embrace God’s little creatures – Ok, who am I kidding, I’m talking about mosquitoes – who miraculously emerge with the spring thaw (in June) and stay with us until every living crow has been infected with West Nile Virus sometime in late August. But you’ve heard the argument… without mosquitoes, there would be no food for the birds and bats. Without birds and bats… (insert food chain here)… the world would come to an end. We certainly don’t want to be responsible for that now, do we.

Embrace the winter activities – Honestly, how could you NOT be excited about the prospect of fishing for eel pout while sitting on a pickle pail in the middle of a frozen lake in -10 degree weather?

Embrace your auto mechanic – No literally, give him a big hug. Because he will become your best friend and most important ally in the war against winter.

Embrace December 22nd – By the time December 21st (the “shortest” day of the year in terms of daylight) rolls around, some people are tired of going to and coming home from work in the dark. That’s why we celebrate December 22nd as being the “first day that the days only get longer from here on out” day. I know it’s not officially recognized on the list of holidays, but it sure as hell means more to us than, say – Arbor Day.

and finally…

Embrace Lutefisk – Pfffttt, just kidding – that was a sick joke! Except for a few ancient immigrants from the old country, I’ve never met one sane Minnesotan who willingly eats this slimy crap. Recently the word got out that this stuff is actually soaked in lye before it’s cooked and well, that just kind of took that fun out of it. And the taste.

Yes, there are many more “special qualities” to Minnesota that aren’t listed here, but these should be a good start for the screening process to help you decide if you have a thick enough head skin to live here.

But don’t get this confused with what we call the screening process… you know, the process to patch all the holes in our screens – so God’s little creatures don’t get into our houses.

Ok, this is probably going to come off just a little negative, but I can’t honestly say I’ve ever met anyone who has kept a major new year’s resolution commitment. And you wanna know why? Easy. It’s because most people pick things that are too insanely impossible in the first place.

Oh right…
“I currently chain-smoke 3 packs a day but I’m going to quit smoking cold turkey on Tuesday.”
“I’m going to train all winter and run my first marathon this spring!”
“I’M going to eat nothing but organic vegetables grown within 2 miles of my house!”

Shut up. Just shut up. You’ll never last a week and you’ll be more miserable for trying when you fail. So why even bother?

I say if you HAVE to make a resolution – which you don’t – then make it something you can actually follow through on.

For example – stop picking your nose in your car at intersections. Or start leaving money in the basket for the donuts you eat at church on Sunday. Or give up watching SpongeBob SquarePants for the first 4 hours of every Saturday (ok, that one’s not as easy as it sounds). Little things like that. Little things that make you feel good about yourself. Little things that make you say “Hey – I’m not a total loser!”

So that’s my advice to you as this new year rolls on in. Keep it easy, keep it light, and most of all keep it to yourself. Because I really don’t want to have to pretend I’m going to support you in your unrealistic attempt to better yourself when I know you’re not going to last past January 2nd in the first place. But that’s only because years ago I vowed to be the most open and honest person I can be at all times. See, the good resolutions DO stick!

And now on a related note, I’m going to leave you with a little pencil sketch I made when I was touring as a mere youngster on the road – just after I had returned from playing some small islands in the South Pacific with the USO. I guess I was fascinated by the concept of desert islands at the time and the thought of being stranded on one was on my mind. Of course I’ve updated the caption to reference this next year instead.

Happy New Year everyone! I hope you have a fabulous and resolution-free holiday!

The other night I was innocently flipping through the channels and landed on a rerun of Jay Leno, just before he was about to introduce the musical guest for the night.

Since I didn’t know who he had booked, I stayed tuned, eager to enjoy another quality musical guest. But imagine my surprise when camera panned over to the stage and instead found…

THIS GUY!

GAH!I thought these guys were long dead. I guess that explains why Dee Snider looks like he’s been exhumed.

Last year Twisted Sister celebrated their 30th anniversary as a band, and to cap it off they released this new holiday album called… you guessed it – “A Twisted Christmas“.

And so the other night I watched them play their very twisted version of O Come All Ye Faithful which (cleverly?) superimposes the words directly over the same melody as We’re Not Gonna Take It.

Hmm, he didn’t figure that out until now? I remember thinking that was a rip-off 23 years ago when that song first came out.

Anyway, the act was entertaining – in a “it’s really hard to not watch a train wreck” kind of way. The poor band looks exactly like a weather-beaten version of the original, except for the “please just shoot me now” expressions they now wear on their faces.

Here’s the video of their version of O Come All Ye Faithful.

As I’m sure you discovered right away, having actual acting skills were not as much a prerequisite for this gig as much as having large breasts and the ability to shake your hair around.

Of course I’m quite sure you weren’t surprised to find they managed to add a sexy “video chick” to a classic Christmas song such as O Come All Ye Faithful. But then again isn’t that their job?